


In which Cardan asks Jude to return to Elfhame

by lunalena



Category: The Cruel Prince, The Folk of the Air - Holly Black, The Wicked King - Fandom
Genre: F/M, the wicked king spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-21
Updated: 2019-01-21
Packaged: 2019-10-13 17:00:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17491796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunalena/pseuds/lunalena
Summary: A drabble written in the aftermath of finishing The Wicked King. Jude is in the mortal realm and Cardan comes to ask her to return.





	In which Cardan asks Jude to return to Elfhame

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a Jurdan drabble I wrote after finishing TWK and being completely HEARTBROKEN and in disbelief; this was an attempt to help alleviate the massive book hangover I had. (it didn't work)

Jude did not stir from her place on the sofa when the doorbell rang.                                                                                                                                                       
Instead she let Vivi, who probably though it was Heather, rush to the door while she lay on the couch, absentmindedly watching the television as she so often did these days. She heard the click of the door opening followed by Vivi’s harsh laugh. Then the door slammed shut.                                                                                       
Jude sat up at the sound to see Vivi shaking her head with a look of bewilderment on her face.

“Your husband is at the door,” she said.                                                                                                                                                                                                  
“What?”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    
“You heard me,” Vivi replied, and stalked towards the back of the apartment.

She seemed more perturbed that it wasn’t her girlfriend than the fact that the High King of Elfhame was on her doorstep. Jude sprang off the couch and wrenched open the door. Sure enough, Cardan stood on their porch, his black hair glimmering like raven’s feathers in the late afternoon sun. “Hello wife,” he said, a smirk upon his face. Jude couldn’t help herself.

She smacked him.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
The crack echoed through the empty yard and bounced off the walls of the apartment. Distantly, she heard Vivi laughing. “What’s going on?” Oak asked from somewhere deep in the room. “Marital dispute,” Vivi replied. Jude could tell she was herding Oak into one of the bedrooms by the sound of their fading footsteps. Vivi was leaving her alone with Cardan.                                                                                                                                                                                                   
Well, not completely alone, for it was then that Jude noticed the guards waiting farther back. Guards that began to approach, and only stopped when Cardan held out a hand. “It’s fine,” he called out, and then turned back to her. “I suppose I deserve that.”

Jude gripped his arm and began to drag him into the house, slamming the door behind him. “You suppose? You suppose?”

Cardan yanked his arm out of her grasp. “Yes, that’s what I said. Now will you calm down?”

She backed several steps away from him, unsure of what to do. His words made her want to scream and her anger simmered on her skin, but she could not deny that her heart had leapt at the sight of him. “What are you doing here?”

Cardan smiled, mischief twinkling in his black eyes. “Can’t a man visit his wife?”

“Don’t call me that,” Jude snapped, “we both know that meant nothing.”

She watched as his face suddenly became serious, his jaw tightening and his eyebrows pulling inward at her words. When he spoke, he did so with no mirth in his tone. “On the contrary, it meant everything.” Jude let out a huff, not knowing what else to do. He couldn’t lie, but everything was a nebulous term. Wasn’t it? She hadn’t been forced to think in faerie riddles and half-truths in a while. She was out of practice.

She also couldn’t think past her anger. She thought she’d made progress in the past few weeks by spinning schemes in her head, but the sight of Cardan, whole, hale, and smirking at her, brought it all back. His final smile the day he created Insear and exiled her. Her humiliation and defeat. “If you won’t tell me why you’re here you can leave.”

Cardan let out a long-suffering sigh as though disappointed she did not want to play games with him. “I am here because a war is brewing in Elfhame with me and your crown on one side and your father and sister on the other. Both sides will be destroyed if it’s not stopped.”  
Jude couldn’t believe him. Did he think her stupid? “I am well aware of that. If you wanted my counsel on how to avoid a war perhaps you should not have exiled me.”

“Even you must admit that it was a brilliant scheme on my part,” he replied, the mischief alighting in his eyes once again. He played these games to avoid telling her his true intentions, Jude knew. He did it to avoid being vulnerable. Once, she may have given in. No longer. “Extremely brilliant. You lost your best counselor and the person who saved you from dying a slow death from poison. You lost the one person who knows your enemy best. You did wonderful, Cardan.”

He had the decency to look away from her piercing glare. “In all the time you’ve been gone, you haven’t realized I had my reasons for exiling you? Valid ones?”

“What? Like killing Balekin? I was sorry for that, once. I despaired how to tell you. Then you exiled me, and so I forgave myself and rationed it away. He attempted to kill you and nearly killed me. It was him or I. It was also the price Roiben demanded for supporting your claim to the throne. But you didn’t think of any of that, did you?”

“He was my brother, Jude,” he replied, voice soft. Once, Jude would have thought of the little boy she saw in the orb, the little boy who just wanted to be loved. Once.

“He was a murderer.”

Something flashed in Cardan’s eyes, and he strode forward until only a hands-width lay between them. “You dismiss it as though it were Valerian or some other fool. How would you feel if it were Taryn?”

His words landed like a blow, pushing her a few steps back. “Don’t you dare compare the two.”

He cocked a brow and stepped toward her, regaining the space Jude abandoned. “She married your lover. She betrayed you to serve the man who killed your parents.”

“He was never _my_ anything,” she whispered.

“Doesn’t make it hurt any less, does it?” he returned, his breath reaching all the way to her lips.

Deep inside her, beneath the simmering anger, Jude caught the meaning of the words. Balekin was horrible, but Cardan still mourns him. “Balekin wasn’t the reason I exiled you, anyway.”

Jude lifted her chin, willing her voice to be cold though inside she is burning. With anger, with shame, with something else that feels familiar though she never thought she’d feel it again. “You wanted to be rid of me.”

Cardan took her chin between his fingers and tilted it so that she gazed right into his eyes. “I’ve never wanted anything less, I’m afraid.”

“Then what?” she breathed.

“To keep you safe and to keep the crown safe. Did you pay attention during our troth, lovely wife? The crown is ours. If Madoc killed me, he still wouldn’t have the throne. You’d still be in the way.”

The words slam into Jude, and a hundred puzzle pieces finally fit together. She hadn’t thought of that. She’d been too blinded by her shame, by the elation of the wedding and the despair at being exiled. It had been all too easy for her to believe he despised her; it had been too hard to believe he truly cared for her.  
His mouth quirked once more. “Brilliant, isn’t it?”

She couldn’t deny that it was.

“Why are you here now, then?”

“Perhaps I can’t stay away,” he whispered, and brought his lips down to hers. It felt like it always did, extreme and lovely and terrifying. It was the sweet pain of exercises and the heady thrill of power, the joy of succeeding and the pain of betrayal all at once. It was terrible. It was enthralling.

Jude brought a blade to his throat nonetheless.

“There is the Jude I so adore,” he said against her lips.

“Did you really think that you could come here with your pretty words and kisses and get what you wanted? Do you think me a fool? Do you think I am Nicasia?”          
He huffed a laugh, the breath of it tickling her lips. “I think that you worry about the war enough to help me despite what I’ve done.”  
“You greatly overestimate my compassion. You, Madoc, and Taryn destroying each other sounds perfect to me. I don’t even need to do any of the work.” She did not need to pretend the coldness into her voice. The old Jude was back. The scheming, unapologetic mortal who was capable of besting faeries.

Cardan levelled a look at her, still completely ignoring the blade at his throat. “You don’t mean that.”                                                                                                    
“Don’t pretend to know me,” she seethed, and pushed him away.                                                                                                                                                            
“Oh, but I do, dear Jude. I know you’ve been scheming since you left. I know you probably already have a hundred plans stored in that clever little mind of yours. And I know you care greatly for the future of Elfhame, if not for the lives of your family and I. Most importantly, I know you are too extraordinary to stay here in the mortal realm forever.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                             
Jude bit her lip and looked away. She did have plans, most of which revolved around Grimsen and a new crown. She had plans on how to stop Madoc and about a hundred ways to destroy Cardan. She just had to figure out which plan she should choose.                                                                                                                    
She needed more information.                                                                                                                                                                                                                
“If you exiled me in order to keep the crown safe from Madoc, bringing me back now would have made it all pointless.”                                                                        
Cardan gave her a tired look that said _you have absolutely no faith in me_. She absolutely did not.                                                                                                  “Not entirely. All of Faerie has heard that I exiled you. We can sneak you back in and you can scheme your wicked heart away without Madoc being the wiser.”             
“You made me Queen of Elfhame one night and laughed in my face the next. What makes you think I would ever serve you again?”                                                        
He could sense that she was warming to the idea of returning- she could see the hope and mischief and another, deeper emotion sparking in his gaze. “What is a marriage without a little dysfunction? Kidding, kidding, don’t give me that look. I will swear whatever vow you demand in order to ensure your acceptance.”                 
Jude pondered this. A thousand schemes spun in her head. A crown upon her brow and a throne below her. The lure of power. She could nearly taste it.                       
“I want to be the Queen. Truly this time.”                                                                                                                                                                                                
“Well, then it is a wondrous thing that you are married to the King.”


End file.
